April 25, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:09
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| *intro music* Imagine this. | |
| Imagine that the only thing you know about some 30-year-old guy is that he is really, really, REALLY into comic books. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Now, comic books are all about courage and heroism and nobility and fighting and triumphing over evil. | |
| This 30-year-old man is constantly immersed in these heroic tales. | |
| What do you picture when you think of such a man? | |
| Do you picture a hero? | |
| Or not so much? | |
| Would this change if, instead of being into comic books, this man was a fanboy of Star Trek or Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica or Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons or Star Wars? | |
| Isn't it odd when you think that those men who are the most into heroic fiction tend to be the least heroic people around? | |
| Actually, it isn't that odd. | |
| Because that is exactly what comic books and science fiction and fantasy are designed to do. | |
| What is the basic message of, say, Star Wars? | |
| Sure, it's that heroism and courage can exist, but where? | |
| Why, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. | |
| You see, heroism is never where you are. | |
| It is never something that you can achieve on your own. | |
| In these stories you don't actually have to do anything in your own life to become a hero. | |
| All you have to do is sit around and whine until some old dude in an old blanket comes along and whisks you off to a life of adventure and combat. | |
| This also works if you have furry feet. | |
| It might be an owl though if you're forced to live under the stairs. | |
| All these mythologies, which have remained essentially unchanged for thousands of years, are entirely about enslaving you and turning you into useful cannon fodder for your masters. | |
| In all these tales, a depressed life of dumb chores and crushed opportunities gets magically transformed into heroic and always violent adventures when an older man comes and takes you away. | |
| All this is just designed to make you want to go to war when the state comes to kidnap you. | |
| Real heroism, however, is something very different from what is always portrayed. | |
| Real heroism is something that you can achieve now, today, in the next hour, if you want. | |
| Real heroism does not require you to be bitten by a radioactive spider, or exposed to a gamma ray bomb blast, or cosmic radiation, or be injected with a super soldier serum, or pilot giant god-like robots, or get a blood transfusion from a demon and bang a succubus. | |
| Or drink radioactive wastewater in your fishbowl. | |
| Or crash land from the planet Krypton. | |
| Or be sprayed by chemicals that were struck by lightning. | |
| Or have a magical ring. | |
| Or be blinded by more of this omnipresent radioactive stuff. | |
| Or die and make a deal with a demon to return to the living world with superpowers. | |
| Or have rare DNA mutations. | |
| Or yet another magical sword. | |
| Or just have the ability to talk to squirrels. | |
| All these stories have exactly the same message. | |
| Heroism is not for you. | |
| Heroism is for other times, other places, other worlds, other circumstances which will never ever happen to you. | |
| You must wait for someone to come and turn you into a hero. | |
| And that man will never come. | |
| You are allowed to be heroic in your imagination because that way heroism remains an otherworldly fantasy posing no danger to the powers that be. | |
| You're just not allowed to be heroic in your own life. | |
| But the world will never be saved without heroes. | |
| You are constantly being trained to be heroic only in the service of your masters. | |
| Only in slaughter and sacrifice and subjugation. | |
| But there is no heroism in serving your masters. | |
| Real heroism is questioning why you have masters at all. | |
| All these stories, all these fantasies, all these superpowers are designed to steal heroism from you, to make it impossible and fantastical and remote and unachievable, and make you useful to your masters as a hitman if needed. | |
| What is the opposite of this? | |
| Well, the opposite of fantasy is philosophy. | |
| The opposite of mythology is integrity. | |
| And integrity is truth in action. | |
| Integrity does not require laser swords, rings of power, magic or starships or mutant genes. | |
| You can be heroic and start the process of truly saving the world before the sun goes down to night. | |
| And when the sun rises tomorrow, you will be a different person. |
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